Exciting and special:
When Hannah Szenes was 12, she wrote a Hanukkah song that she wrote for her grandmother.
The inspirational song was written in Hungarian in December 1933 and is in the archives of Hannah Szenes at the National Library.
Hannah Szenes was born in Hungary in July 1921 and was a Zionist.
In 1939 she immigrated to Eretz Israel and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Sdot Yam.
In 1943 she volunteered for the British Army during World War II against Nazi Germany.
Szenes, a paratrooper and poet, parachuted near the Hungarian border, crossed the border into Hungary and was captured.
She was tortured and executed on November 7, 1944, when she was only 23 years old.
The song for Hanukkah written by Hannah Szenes as a child is touching: "Hanukkah day, the candles are lit, every Jewish heart is overwhelmed "Our teachings from place to place, from which we drew faith and innocence / we wandered in the wilderness of rebellious famines, but with us God - we will not be lonely / and we are descendants of fathers like them, we will not despair.
Hanukkah song by Hannah Szenes when she was 12, Photo: Hannah Szenes Archive, National Library
Hannah Szenes was born and raised in Budapest in a bourgeois-Jewish environment, which was involved in the circles of the Hungarian cultural elite.
During her teenage years she nurtured the writing talent she possessed and wrote diaries and poems.
Her ambition was to continue the path of her father, Bella Szenes, who was a respected writer, journalist and playwright in Hungary, and died when she was a child.
Among the archive materials of Hannah Szenes, which arrived at the National Library a year ago, is a notebook that includes songs, which she composed in her youth from the age of seven.
She would dictate her poems to her grandmother on her mother's side, and the grandmother wrote them in beautiful, neat handwriting.
The many poems were written in special notebooks kept in the National Library.
Hannah Szenes' archivist at the library, Hagit Zimroni, noted that "despite her young age, the song implies a sense of national pride and a spirit of determination that will characterize Hannah Szenes in adulthood, and the song also reflects the impact of Hanukkah's national ideas on girl Hannah."
Katrina, Hannah Szenes' mother, brought these notebooks to Israel, and the poem was translated into Hebrew by Avigdor Hameiri, on the occasion of the publication of the book "Hannah Szenes: Her Life, Mission and Death", on the 100th anniversary of her birth.
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